I kinda like my Thanksgiving dinner to have the same basics every time. It feels reassuring to have the traditional dishes we always have, made with all the weird accommodations we deal with for my family’s different eating requirements: my mom’s vegetarian cornbread stuffing cooked far away from the turkey, the turkey for everyone else cooked somewhere where she can’t smell it cooking (I know, I don’t get it either), homemade cranberry sauce for my mom and my sister and the jellied cranberry sauce from the can for my dad and I (what, the canned sauce is SO superior and if you don’t understand that then I have nothing to say to you), and lots and lots of classic creamy mashed potatoes for everyone.
The best - with the ridges still intact!
This year we aren’t having a sit-down dinner, but if we were, I’d make sure we have these dishes. Inventive side dishes are fine and even enjoyable, as long as we have these basics on our Thanksgiving table to ensure that no matter what craziness is served beside them, we will have a tasty Thanksgiving. Except that last year, it got all topsy-turvy. I couldn’t fully comprehend it until later, and couldn’t accept it until much later. That’s right: we tried a different recipe for mashed potatoes. Don’t all gasp at once.
It was all my fault, really. My very good friend Michael came to Thanksgiving, and asked if he could make his traditional mashed potatoes, which are loaded with bacon, cheese, chives and tons of sour cream. I said of course, as long as you don’t mind also having our mashed potatoes on the table because everyone in my family likes them an awful lot. He felt fine about that. So we agreed to have two mashed potato dishes and everyone could just choose the one they liked (an agreement I made while rolling my eyes and feeling a bit sorry for him and his complicated mashed potatoes that no one would eat and that – worst of all – would make bad sandwich leftovers).
Well. Needless to say, since I’m writing this story, everyone liked his mashed potatoes so much that ours seemed terribly boring in comparison – like someone just forgot to make them tasty and filled with flavor. Including me. Honestly, they are so good that I’m hoping to make them this year – the only homemade thing at our Thanksgiving, which is the highest honor I can confer upon a dish. So just trust me and make them for your Thanksgiving. Your taste buds will thank you. And yes, they are excellent as leftovers too. I was wrong about it ALL, all right?! Geez!
I’ll post photos of the dish soon, but for now, please continue for the recipe and enjoy the beefcake photo of the chef that I coerced him into letting me put up! Love it!
The flowers were simple, but added a punch of color. I bought four bunches of carnations in yellow and three shades of pink, and kept each color in its own vase rather than mixing them. It made the flowers look cohesive and at the same time, with the colored pencils, made the table as a whole very colorful.
We made gorgeous doodles.
And the food…Anna brought her gorgeous macaroons made with organic sweetened condensed milk, but I was so consumed with eating them that I completely forgot to take a photograph. Just imagine perfectly browned, chewy golden macaroons, and you’ll have a good sense of how lovely they were. Please continue for the post-mortem on my dishes.
As for libations, a non-drinking friend is bringing something tasty and non-alcoholic. For the drinkers, I think the wine will have to marry well with the gorgonzola but otherwise could probably be whatever you like. I’ll probably just ask at the wine shop what they would recommend, as I’m no wine expert. I even went to a lovely wine tasting the other night that was meant to be focused on how to order wine from a mysterious wine list – we all know how foreign those look, right?! This was information I needed! – and I kid you not, the advice they gave over and over was “Ask the sommelier.” So basically there is no way to figure it out yourself. Oh well, I still had a great time at the tasting and got to see friends from college, so it was overall a win.